Disney removes unpopular ‘Frozen’ featurette to focus on ‘Coco’

Walt Disney Studio’s PR and marketing teams are taking a nod from
“Frozen’s” Elsa and letting it go.

The company slated a short film from the next installment in its highly
popular “Frozen” franchise, “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure,” to run before Disney
Pixar Studio’s “Coco.” Now, Disney is pulling the short from theaters—to
the relief of many consumers who have complained.

Many turned to social media to complain that the 21-minute short was too
long, and others said it felt like forced marketing.

Walked out of the theater to ask an employee how long the Olaf movie is that plays before COCO and laughed when they said 30 minutes because I thought it was a joke. I like FROZEN but this is my nightmare.

While it is traditional for the studio to run a short film unrelated to the
main feature – some of Disney-Pixar's best work has been found in shorts
such as Lava, ahead of Inside Out, Sanjay's Super Team, which ran ahead of
The Good Dinosaur, or Finding Dory's Piper – they are usually around five
minutes long, and totally unrelated to other projects Disney is working on.

Most of the complaints have centered on the maddening length of the
featurette. Before a Pixar feature film, we are accustomed to getting a
charming short running five minutes or so — a warm-hearted masterwork in
miniature that preps our heartstrings for the emotional depths of most
Pixar films.

Instead, however, we get a small “Frozen” movie that begins to feel as if
it will never end. We are creatures of habit, and “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure”
eventually feels like the grinning house guest who won’t leave, even though
the party was supposed to clear out long ago. As each successive song in
the four-tune reel cues up, moviegoers’ reactions can be heard to switch
from laughing irritation to growing mockery to outright anger. (This is a
very different era from the days of Disney’s 1983 Oscar-nominated
“Mickey’s Christmas Carol,” which ran 26 minutes, when filmgoers were more conditioned to expect a
featurette of that length before a Disney film.)

Though many complained about its length, others said “Olaf’s Frozen
Adventures”—which features Caucasian characters from Norway—felt
inappropriate before a movie starring Mexican characters surrounding a Day
of the Dead celebration.

Dear @Disney, #coco was such a phenomenal movie that had NO need for a 21 minute Frozen TV special to precede it. Let us brown people have this one.

Some have theorized that Disney combined Olaf's Frozen Adventure
with Coco to get audiences unfamiliar with Dia de los Muertos to
the theater. If that's the case — it's unclear if it'll play again with Coco in the UK or in other locales with later release dates — the
supposed scheming isn't winning goodwill with those who appreciated
Disney-Pixar's attempt to make a movie about a Latino family with care and
authenticity.

Disney isn’t removing “Olaf’s Frozen Adventures” from theaters due to the
backlash: It was originally set to be a limited-time promotion in theaters
before being released as a special on ABC.

“This was always promoted as a limited run so it’s not really a story — the
end of our Olaf theatrical play is coming next week,” a Disney
representative told EW. “All our ads and messaging called it as such.”

Olaf's Frozen Adventure
was originally
supposed to air on ABC as a TV special around the holidays, but the final product felt
too cinematic, according to the filmmakers, so Disney slated it for a theatrical run.

In Mexico, where Coco aired in October, an avalanche of complaints
convinced some movie theaters
to stop playingOlaf's Frozen Adventure
altogether. Interestingly, in the UK it aired in theaters with a
re-release of the original Frozen and didn't suffer the icy barbs of online hate. (Coco won't be
released there until January.)

The short film is also not winning over viewers’ hearts.

So, where did Disney go wrong—and what can PR and marketing pros glean from
the situation?

First, you should carefully consider your audience’s needs. Those who
complained might have enjoyed a “Frozen” featurette by itself, but when
added to 20 minutes of other trailers and advertisements, viewers’
attention spans waned in the more than 40 minutes it took for “Coco” to
start. Those with younger children especially struggled, with some kids
falling asleep.

PR pros should also take care to anticipate potential misunderstandings or
assumptions, and be prepared to answer backlash when branded messages
conflict with consumers’ expectations.

What was probably seen by Disney’s PR and marketing team to be an easy
promotion for “Frozen 2,” especially with the featurette’s heartwarming
holiday message, was taken by some to be insensitive. Anger and
disappointment aren’t feelings any PR pro wants to stir up—especially not
from a company which normally delights.